Free apps in the Google Play Store enable you to record the screen and audio on your phone or tablet. Record app demos or games you play with Screen Recorder - DU Recorder. It’s brilliant!

There are several reasons why you might want to record the screen on your phone or tablet and one is to demonstrate an app, feature or use of the device. You could produce training videos, product guides or view reviews for a course for example.

Games players love to show off their skills and they do this by recording their activities and posting the videos online, or by live streaming. By recording the screen you could provide a walkthrough for a game. Perhaps not a whole game, but maybe a level, campaign or mission.

There is no obvious way to record the screen in Android itself, but there are several great screen recorder apps available in the Google Play Store, such as Screen Recorder - DU Recorder.

Record the screen

When this app is run, it overlays a small icon on the right side of the screen. Tap the icon and a circular array of icons appear. Among them is a record button and this starts recording whatever is on the screen.

The idea is that you get your app or game ready and in the place you want to start recording, then you open the Screen Recorder menu and hit the record button. You can then continue with the app or game as normal until you want to stop. Hit the Screen Recorder button again and there is a Stop button to end recording and save the video.

Edit your screen recordings

All of the recordings can be viewed in the app and there are some basic, but useful editing functions.

A phone is not the best device to edit video and it cannot compare to a desktop computer with video editing software.

However, the features and functions in the app’s video editor are pretty good. You can trim the start and end of videos, cut parts out of the middle, add background music and titles, rotate and crop video, and merge videos.

You probably won’t want to do anything fancy with the screen recordings and the main aim is just to show what is on the screen, but if you want to edit videos inside the app, these features are sufficient.

In addition to screen recording, there is screen capture and the app saves the screen as an image. However, Android has a built in screenshot facility that works well enough - hold down the volume down and home buttons. Is this needed?

Share your screen recordings

Once the video has been created and edited, it can be shared using the usual Android sharing options. An easy way to get the video onto your computer is to upload it to online storage like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or something similar. Whatever you use on your computer.

There are plenty of other sharing options and you can, for example, upload it to YouTube and make it publicly available for anyone to watch.

Here’s a quick video of N.O.V.A. Legacy - literally my first couple of minutes with the game when I didn’t know what I was doing. Look at the video quality, not my lack of coordination and gaming skills! It was trimmed within the app and then uploaded to YouTube in the app.